


Of a Chaos-Crossed Star

by Blueinkedfrost



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Chaos, Destruction, F/M, Gardening, Interstellar Setting, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24797704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueinkedfrost/pseuds/Blueinkedfrost
Summary: After the Throne of Bhaal was settled, the Bhaalspawn and her lover had many adventures. This is one of them.
Relationships: Charname/Dorn Il-Khan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5
Collections: Baldur's Gate Gift Exchange 2020





	Of a Chaos-Crossed Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AvandraTheMarySueSlayer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvandraTheMarySueSlayer/gifts).



> Dear Avandra, it was an absolute pleasure to write for you. I hope this story contains enough chaos and evil for your liking.

The Star of Wonder was technically not a star, but those who lived or visited the shining structure saw little difference. Its pearly, translucent walls glowed with light and it hovered in a six-dimensional space where many planes met, where telescopes focusing many times faster than light speed showed galaxies exploding into birth and dying in fire. These sights were played over the translucent walls for the pleasure of all the passing guests, winding and rewinding over time and turmoil and supernovae in space and time.

And this particular occasion was one of special pleasure. For an extraordinarily select audience.

None of the guests in attendance was technically a star, but each thought themselves to be as amazing and important as the centre of any solar system you could name, if not more so.

The rich, the powerful, the beautiful, the greedy, the vicious, the hedonistic, the curious - incredibly important guests from twenty-six different worlds flooded the Star of Wonder.

Fayrellin of Candlekeep fit beautifully into that group. It turned out being the daughter of a god got you some party invitations, as long as you were the last surviving child to claim the power of that old god of death. Fayrellin's green, long, heavy-lidded eyes shone out of her striking face. She was a tall and slender elf, eternally young and beautiful, with hair like copper and gold and skin like bronze. Intricate tattoos of vines and leaves crossed her body from top to toe and the gossamer chiton she wore, almost transparent, looked like it would shiver into nothing at the slightest touch.

Fayrellin looked so graceful and delicate that even a breeze could bruise her soft skin, but appearances could be deceptive.

Her lips were a striking blood red, and her newest chance-met acquaintance only thought he knew what she was laughing about.

A gong shivered rippling, silvery tones throughout the air. Fayrellin tossed her crystal glass behind her - a glass so clear and pure that even an emperor wouldn't have been ashamed to drink out of it - and let it either smash or be grabbed by one of the indentured servants scurrying around.

It was time for the auction to begin.

Fayrellin walked past the cages of a gleaming silver metal, force-fields running up and through the bars to keep the exhibits in. These exhibits were highly rare and dangerous. No one would dare to bid on them without colossal resources to keep these treasures confined and get something of use out of them.

The first treasure engraved on the auction card was in a tank. Fayrellin looked through waving water-weeds at the vast gloomy silver eye of the aboleth. Vast creatures, who'd mastered space travel long before most races even began the me-smash-you-with-rock stage. Fayrellin's own world still hadn't mastered space, aside from a few wizardly and gnomish one-offs. Telepathic and immensely powerful - Fayrellin could feel the aboleth beating against even her experienced mind, even now, even despite the colossal dampeners working overtime to quell this creature enough for the auction. But in the past Fayrellin had survived a wizard cutting open her skull to find out how she worked, and she could overcome this with ease.

Aboleths were known as one of the most powerful creatures across multiple universes. And this was ranked the cheapest and least of the goods on sale today.

The next cage held a glowing blue celestial, ten feet tall. Her halo and wild golden eyes were too dazzling to look at directly. These were the direct servants of the gods, powerful and righteous and normally above the mortal planes. This particular one was wrapped up closely in golden chains to keep her from flitting away. Fayrellin smiled to look upon her; she was reminded of an annoying solar she'd once met. She and her lover had made certain she'd never have to hear from that other one, ever again.

Then there was a creature that seemed a cross between a lizardman and a metal golem. It came from some other world, with fierce claws and a blade-tipped tail. Despite all of Fayrellin's travels, she'd seen nothing like this one before; many kinds here were new even to her. She passed by a humanoid with what looked like a circle of blades orbiting her head, a vast reptilian creature with flat teeth, a field of grass that looked like only grass until an onlooker looked closely and saw the small blades move and flatten with an invisible force.

Fayrellin marked off the entries on her auction card, dotting each with silver ink as she inspected for herself. She found one of the more powerful creatures: sitting still but malevolent in his set of chains, naked, gigantic, his leathery wings stretched to the limits of his cell even while sheathed. Fayrellin met the tanar'ri's black gaze with a teasing smirk.

She knew this creature. This pathetic demon called himself Ur-Gothoz. She'd once made him into a gift for her lover, imprisoning him within a black blade, but unfortunately that blade had shattered in the last battle with Melissan. After that, Fayrellin had seized Bhaal's power for herself and remade the Abyssal Blade to draw from the well of divine power instead of a pathetic demon, but they'd not been able to find Ur-Gothoz himself in the mess of the pocket plane. Now someone else had crushed and depowered him. She couldn't think of a better demon for this to happen to.

In the next cage was another familiar face. The one Fayrellin felt the most interest in. He looked only human, tall and dark with a black tattoo crossing his forehead and shaved skull. But as far as Fayrellin was concerned, he was the most dangerous of the lot. He saw her easily but restricted himself to glaring equally at her as everyone else.

Fayrellin's brother Sarevok was in chains. He was another half-god, though his divine spark was puny. Fayrellin had donated a tiny spark of her own essence to him, the more to bind him and his services to her. She'd been disappointed when Sarevok left her party after their battle at Bhaal's throne. He had sailed to Kara-Tur, deserting her. She resented that.

Brother and sister both knew that she would make no move to aid or pity him. He was trapped after leaving her; this punishment was his to endure. Fayrellin had now parted from all her companions, but it was the principle of the thing. She smiled merrily at her brother, baring her fine white pearly teeth, taking in the sight of him offered for sale like a piece of meat.

The crowd of guests tensed and pulsed at the biggest attraction, the most rare and expensive item here by far. Fayrellin used her sharp elbows to move forward and take a decent view for herself.

It didn't look like much. Behind specially made forcefields, an ambiguous shape, its colour midway between green and brown, pulsed in the centre of the space. Its edges blended into the air around it like filmy heat on a hot day.

Fayrellin could sense the life it held.

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen and other respected persons of many planes!" the announcer yelled. "This is _it_ : a fragment of Primordial Source! One of you _lucky_ people will take this home today! Grow your own farmland, cities, civilisations, planets - there is literally no limit! The Primordial Source is a fragment of that which created the universe; perhaps it could even grow your own personal universe!"

"Pfft," someone said, from below Fayrellin's elbow. "This isn't near as impressive as the sights I saw when I filled in as a god for a year. Did I ever tell you that the love goddess Sune really has a thing for turnips?"

She looked down. The ... thing ... below her looked like yet another golem, all bright metal and moving gears. But the grin was all organic. Beneath the illusion, this could be only one turnip-obsessed gnome in the entire multiverse. A wave of cheerful nostalgia swept over Fayrellin, and with her that was an extremely rare mood.

"Why are you here, Jan? In need of some new material?" Fayrellin said.

"Well, whether I'm in need of it or not, I'm sure to get it, what with you here, lass!" Jan said. "I could always count on you to liven up any party. You remind me of my great aunt Mariemaia Glawari Jansen, over at Marrovervitch way. She was a time-travel specialist. She used to hold up clocks ticking and tell us children, 'By the time I finish saying this, you've travelled forward in time by sixty-eight seconds'. She spoke extremely slowly, you see. Childhood speech impediment."

"And what did that have to do with me?" Fayrellin said.

"Well, great aunt Mariemaia quarreled with a lich. In fact this lich was her ex husband. They had nine children before he became undead, and in their extremely messy divorce he laid a curse that rebounded on the children. My great aunt had to destroy him to lay the curse, so she trapped him in her grandfather clock and boiled the clock in her boiler, along with some turnips, mackerel, and dark beer. She fed the children the resulting bone broth and they all did quite well."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You see, Fayrellin ... a lich in time saved nine!"

" ... _And_?"

"The liquor that she brewed from that lich's barrel reminds me of that sloe wine you used to make."

Fayrellin still made that wine. Plants generally did what she wanted.

The crowd changed direction all around them. The bidding was about to begin. Fayrellin smiled and charmed her way all the way to the front, receiving a good seat in compensation for all her expensive semi-transparent drapery.

The bard, perched on a network of silver wire suspended from the ceiling, plucked the strings of his lute to honour the auctioneers. The sound resonated throughout the hall, ricocheting from clean wood and clear crystal. This was said to be the greatest bard to cross Sigil, city of infinite doors. This bard caused political controversy wherever he went, but he had a fine voice.

He was another old friend of Fayrellin's. Haer'Dalis, tiefling, blademaster, actor, adventurer, player. He sung an aria of death and flame, of a woman's green eyes defying the gates of hell themselves. The audience smiled and clapped, thinking the song a sleekly-spun fantasy; Fayrellin took it as a personal compliment.

The auction hall dimmed. The cage bearing the aboleth was illuminated with light. The bids began to fly. The competition and the passion for possession increased and the idle rich threw away colossal fortunes as easily as a commoner might discard a dry bean. All was calm, dignified, a bloodless bartering of wealth for the property of sapient beings.

Or, at least, it should have been.

The doors of the auction hall tore open in a torrent of flame and splinters. Guards aimed magic spells and technological marvels at the intruder, but he bore past them, easily brushing all off him. He was magnificent.

"WHERE IS SHE?" shouted Dorn Il-Khan.

Butcher of Barrow. Scourge of the Sword Coast. Terror of the Umar Hills. Doom of Saradush. Once a Blackguard, now a free man. He'd fought his way through tides of blood to the thrones of gods themselves, and walked away with more power than even he had ever dreamt of.

He'd been with Fayrellin almost since the beginning, until the bitter end. He'd deserved a little reward.

Dorn's black Abyssal Blade sheared through helpless men and women about him. Fayrellin felt its power sing and surge as if it were still a part of herself. She exulted at the fire in her blood.

"Give me to her and die! She knows I have come for her," Dorn called.

Fayrellin still skulked in the shadows behind others in the crowds. Let him have the frustration of waiting for her. She and Dorn had quarrelled not long before he'd stormed off; it was he who'd abandoned her. She had only come here for a little fun. She'd known - hoped - that he'd eventually come to his senses and follow.

In the meantime, in the midst of chaos, Sarevok seized his chance. Fayrellin knew her brother too well to even suspect he wouldn't. He slammed his heavy chains into the skull of one of the guards, stole a weapon, and proceeded from there.

The celestial was next to break free. She manifested a flaming sword, her wings beat despite her chains, and she rushed on the crowd. From his perch above, Haer'Dalis struck up another tune, this one of freedom. This time raw magic surged through his voice. He sung of smashed chains and broken masters and the shining road to freedom. Not just prisoners, but the servants as well joined his rebellion and turned on their masters.

Ur-Gothoz was rising. Fayrellin decided to make herself known first. She didn't want some demon stealing all her glory. She stepped into the open.

"So you've come for me at last, you deserter," she said. People kept their distance from her, despite not quite knowing why. The beautiful woman in the clean gossamer gown faced the invader dripping with filth and gore.

"Traitorous she-devil," Dorn said, and casually rammed his sword through the head of a guard behind him.

"Foolish whoreson," Fayrellin said. "How dare you leave me. You will be punished."

"As will you." Dorn's force of will sent enemies scattering with fear and stinking of urine.

"Promises, promises."

Many would call Fayrellin of Candlekeep's heart as black as the deepest dye that was ever wrung out of a Maztican gall nut, steeped in cold iron and bone char and bloody earth. Many would say that her lover was the same. Fayrellin of Candlekeep and Dorn Il-Khan were bonded for life, sealed in blood amidst seared wastelands. This was a part of the games they played with each other ever since the last battle, when both Fayrellin and Dorn had given and taken away a great many things.

At the Throne of Bhaal, Fayrellin turned her back on being a god.

You had to obey rules, when you were a god.

Fayrellin called on her power and laughed. She was a druid, servant and master of nature itself, and let all before her know fear to face her. Grass seeds fell out of the hem of her expensive dress, spilling out and across the rich carpet. They grew in an instant. Thorns and vines and poisoned flowers attacked guests and guards and added to the pandemonium. She was in a mood to turn some slavers into bloody pulp and feed them to her plants. She and Dorn stood back to back, joyful as their enemies were slaughtered.

Ur-Gothoz approached. His leather wings beat the air and his talons launched straight toward Dorn. Fayrellin was less than flattered, as she was the one who'd sealed him in Dorn's Abyssal Blade the first time.

The demon's battle cry was a wild scream while launching himself at his own former servant - nothing more articulate than that - and Dorn met him with a harsh grunt and raised blade. Fayrellin let the two of them have each other and looked for more exciting things to do.

Her vines tripped one of the fleeing guests, a slender figure wrapped in a black cloak. Another illusion. Fayrellin made her vine dangle the woman before her like a ripe tomato. The guest was not at all taken aback by this, but instead withered the vegetation with a touch of her fingers and dropped nimbly to the ground. Her hood fell and she returned Fayrellin's insolent glance.

"Don't assume I came here for you, _xenca'valsharess_. Frog Queen. I only came for the food," said Viconia DeVir, another old companion. She called to her goddess Shar for aid.

"Those little durian tartlets; the dragonfruit syllabub; the densuke roulades!" Jan Jansen said, from under Viconia's left elbow. "Why, it was almost as good as fresh turnips!" His illusions conjured up arrays of aasimar and orders of orcs, ready to fight. Anyone who tried to ram a sword through the fakes might well find themselves hit with a very real trap.

Fayrellin turned her attention back to the aboleth. The tank was overgrown with water-weeds. At Fayrellin's call, the weeds erupted from the tank and cracked open the protections laid against the aboleth. All at once, the aboleth's telepathic power overwhelmed the Star of Wonder. Servants picked up broken glass and stabbed their masters for freedom, slaves shattered their chains, and all was glorious chaos.

Sarevok, brother to Fayrellin, rampaged like a god. He fought one of the alien creatures, a vicious spiked thing nearly twice his height. He shaved off pieces and pieces of it over time, leaving it a bloody mess. Brother and sister had an unspoken compact never to help or pity each other, but that didn't mean they couldn't approve of each other's carnage.

Fayrellin's power over living plants overwhelmed the building. The tattoos on her skin glowed a brilliant green. The markings snaked and moved their way over her body, slipping and changing while Fayrellin's summoned vines and thorns ripped and forced their way through anything in their path. The gnome-made telescopes cracked and tore through, years of meticulous engineering effort ripped away in a bare few moments. Jan Jansen's illusions ran wild to confuse everyone. Dorn Il-Khan fought his old demonic master in a bloodthirsty battle. Viconia called on the power of her goddess to bring a fog of war to blind their enemies. Above them, Haer's song called for yet more chaos.

Sarevok cut through the alien's neck, taking the head for a trophy. "Your wretched greenery is eating through the Star itself, sister. Perhaps you did not consider that the rest of us might not enjoy asphyxiating in empty space."

"Asphyxiating? I thought that one blew up in space." Haer'Dalis lightly leapt down from the ceiling to take his place before Fayrellin. "There is a famous ballad about a man's skin swelling, his eyes exploding, and his body collapsing into bloody scraps floating between the stars."

"No, with utter deprivation of air, asphyxiation is correct," Viconia told him. "I have experimented with similar torture incantations many times."

"Thank you! I shall make a note of it for my next concert."

"This reminds me of the time when my step-great uncle Fizziwig Grimmjaw Moomintroll Jansen the Fourth was trapped in a giant space hamster wheel on a Starjammer pleasure cruise to the planet of were-succubi ... "

"Not now, Jan."

Indeed the Star of Wonder's shining pearly walls bent and broke around them. Soon they would all be left to the dark chill of space. Fayrellin's vegetation had spread too far and fast for even her to control. The plants fed on anyone they could track down, and grew all the more with the bloodshed. A few terrified auctioneers had managed to flee to escape pods.

 _No. Let the slavers die._ They would find only poison waiting for them there. Fayrellin looked to her lover Dorn. He was covered in the oily black blood of his former demonic master. He stalked toward her, carrying his sword. Gods, the sight of him weakened her in ways she would never admit - but she would soon take and conquer him.

"Cut a path for me," Fayrellin ordered him, gesturing forward. Her druid's senses tingled. Her own life she grasped and gripped and seized with everything within her. Like Sarevok, she would have scratched and clawed her way out from death back into the land of the living if she'd fallen into the nether realms. By the fortune of Bhaal's power within her, she would never have to.

Something else in here also craved such life.

Fayrellin wasn't the only person to think of trying to exploit the Primordial Source. But the way it superheated anyone who approached it until they exploded was a turn-off. Screams and flecks of skin burnt too quickly to smell of anything wafted through the air. Fayrellin studied it. A prisoner, not sapient enough to know it on a conscious level, but angry and desperate to escape.

Seizing control of it wasn't the answer. A more insidious strategy was called for. Dorn guarded her back while Fayrellin reached out to the wild nature she'd created. Rose petals from socialites' heads, growing into vicious bushes with deadly scents. Sharp-edged grass and spreading thorn vines. Moss underfoot. Life was everywhere, if you knew how to look. She spread her power into the nooks and crannies around the Primordial Source, going around and under with a carpet of moss. Her breathing slowed and she slipped into the same rhythm as its pulsing.

_Life is here and all around you. Life is chaos and destruction and terror and excitement. Maybe even love, of a sort. Join with me and take us back to the life we know. Join with your other self, on the other side of the stars, two solar systems down to the left and straight to the east until you reach the Torilian system and the realms. Come join with us._

She kissed Dorn brutally. The acid blood on his skin sizzled against her flesh, made her lips brighter red. The Primordial Source exploded with life and light.

Slavers, rebels, captives spun outward when the walls of the Star of Wonder finally gave in. Fayrellin's companions reached out and were pulled with her into a bright widening portal back to their homeworld. They left the scene behind them exploding in chaos and destruction.

A perfect date night.


End file.
